Apparently, The Reflector is paying a character named Robert Scribner to write opinion articles this year.
The truth is I, former opinion editor of this publication, am responsible for hiring this Scribner character about three years ago. Never being one to tolerate or provoke controversy and tomfoolery, I had to put up with this Scribner character begrudgingly.
But you can only put up with so much. This Scribner character’s most recent article, “Phelps helps entire sporting world,” was fallacious and not my idea of a good time.
The first inexcusable errors were featured in these lines: “Brett Favre is very, very old. In a lot of ways, he’s like John McCain. Considering the fact that politicians age twice as fast as humans, Favre is actually the elder of the two.”
If only this Scribner character knew how to do a little research like Thomas Edison, who never invented the airplane overnight. Politicians are humans! I would not suggest otherwise. Favre was born on October 10, 1969. John McCain was born on August 29, 1936. As anybody who knows his multiplication tables knows, that is a 33-year difference. Clearly, McCain is the elder of the two.
The next mistake was a moral one: ” . the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, which is one Olympics away from being the Games of the XXX Olympiad. I’m not sure if that’s exciting or revolting, but it does conjure up a variety of strange images.”
For those of you “in the dark,” so to speak, this Scribner character implied that “XXX” is exclusively a descriptor of pornographic material. A college newspaper is not supposed to have any mention of sex, outside of the kind that happens between a married man and woman. I doubt this Scribner character was referring to sex between a married man and woman.
Finally, the worst offense was this Scribner character’s libel against gold medalist swimmer Michael Phelps. Phelps is an American hero. But here we go again with the article I hate with every inch of my small intestine: “Michael Phelps is a cheater because he time-traveled from one year in the future to compete in these Olympics.”
The only proof this Scribner character has to back up this libelous assertion is his five copies of the “Back to the Future” trilogy on DVD.
I’m so furious right now I might never read anything again. I implore The Reflector to stop allowing this Scribner character to write every week. Most importantly, I want you to stop paying him.
Jed Pressgrove is a graduate student majoring in sociology. He can be contacted at
[email protected].